onCaring – Concluded an I&D project to provide users and caregivers their location in real time using Wi-Fi technology

OnCaring it’s a company specialized in the development of technologic solutions to support elders’ population and assisted by the long-term or domestic support services.

With the motto “give peace of mind and spirit to the caregivers through information”, onCaring addresses to a market of more than 20 million elders that currently need long-term continuous care in Europe, USA and Brazil.

onCaring intend to provide a service to the caregivers that, through innovative technology, ensures a continuous monitoring and the availability of relevant information that increment the conscience and correct evaluation about the users’ state of health.

The project approached the improvement of products and solutions directed for the Continuing Care, specifically in the location of users and caregivers in buildings in real time, movement tracking (indoor tracking) and in recognition occurrences related with users giving an early intervention.

With this, the project focussed in the development of a cutting-edge software, appealing to methods, algorithms and knowledge provided by the scientific partner, for significantly increase efficiency and effectiveness for process management of users in assisted living homes. The project had the support of Mathematics Department (DMat) of School of Science and Technology of Coimbra University (FCTUC), and also with the support of Trofa Health for performing the tests in their units.

This was aimed for challenging and exceeding the existing weak reliability about people localization products in real time in buildings with Wi-Fi systems installed. With the project results it’s possible improve the life quality of elders supervised in assisted living homes, since there is a bigger trust in real time monitoring, resulting from the incremental precision of the user location, diminishing the need to limit their movement and keep the permanent proximity surveillance from the caregiver.

The project was strongly orientated for global market, with particular incidence in Europe – Holland and Benelux, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Sweden. The elder oriented caregiver services, as continuous care, it’s in strong international development due to age and disability range, since the long-term care starts growing exponentially between the 75 and 85 years of age. Thereby, a rapid growth in demand is inevitable for the next years if we consider the global ageing population, with more than 500 million of elders with an age above 65 years, and an estimation for 2 thousand million elders with more than 60 years in 2050 (United Nations and European Commission).

The achieved results strongly benefited by Trofa Health involvement, where their collaborators and users were final users of the technologies and validators of the developments achieved and helping in guiding the customization for maximizing the operational utility.

Currently in consolidation phase in the Portuguese market, celebrated, in 2014, contracts in the residential support segment with important entities working in the sector, as Carlton Life Boavista, in Oporto, and SCM in Sines.

onCaring had the support of AAVANZ to establishing project targets and for preparing the submission.

Presently onCaring is expanding commercially in the Portuguese market, and in exploration phase for the international market. Their differentiating factors and the installation ability, resulting from this project, has been recognized by their costumers, as in technologic terms, as in commercial approach. It is expected that the strong adhesion in the last months of the onCaring solutions, contribute for consolidation of the obtained results and their commercial success result in an improvement of the provided services by the institutions that support the elder population.